CVE-2026-102414: pbkdf2 rehashes long passwords on every iteration, enabling denial of service

Severity: low (CVSS 3.7 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-29 · updated 2026-09-30
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

pbkdf2 through 3.1.6 re-hashes passwords longer than the digest's block size on every iteration in its JavaScript fallback (lib/sync.js). A password longer than the block size (64 bytes, or 128 bytes for sha384 and sha512) is passed to HMAC as the key on every iteration, and HMAC hashes such keys in full each time. Cost is therefore O(iterations × password length), and a long password can block the event loop. The fallback is used by pbkdf2Sync and pbkdf2 on Node.js before 0.12, on Bun (1.0.0 through 1.1.34, and 1.2.6 and later), and on Deno 2.9.0 and later, because their native pbkdf2Sync fails the library's feature check. It is also used when lib/sync.js is imported directly. Node.js 0.12 and later, and browser builds (which use lib/sync-browser.js), are not affected. Applications that enforce a reasonable maximum password length are not meaningfully affected.

Affected products

Npm Pbkdf2: before 3.1.7 — fixed in 3.1.7
browserify pbkdf2: through 3.1.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Npm Pbkdf2 3.1.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2026-102414 or the next vulnerability affects your stack